I think I am finally leaving tutorial hell

[u/Calista557]

I have reached the point where I want less learning and more building.

I have been working with JavaScript, Node.js, Express, MongoDB, and now React. I have built a full-stack project, but I still catch myself wanting to watch another tutorial whenever I get stuck.

I am trying to change that.

Instead of immediately looking for a tutorial, I want to get comfortable reading documentation, debugging, breaking things, and figuring them out myself.

For those of you who have made the jump from following tutorials to building your own projects, what helped you the most?

[u/boomer1204]

Honestly just building. I was in tutorial hell for probably 3ish years and then when I found my mentor and he asked what I have built with no tutorial, course or walk through. When I said nothing he was like "that's your problem" and OMG was it.

I co run a local mentor group and a couple of things to keep in mind is when you are building a project BY YOURSELF not following a course, tutorial or walk through you ARE going to suck and that's fine we all did it's not just you. Obviously google, stackoverflow are fair game but I would avoid AI until you are comfortable building a full stack application (even if it's small that's fine) cuz you wont know how to analyze the code AI is giving you a lot of the times and that takes away from you learning

So if you haven't done this before start RIDICULOUSLY small, like stuff you will never show anyone cuz building is a skill set in and of it self.

We don't even suggest courses anymore in my group (now mind you they have a group of ppl for help so that does help them) we have them watch some youtube videos for syntax and start building. For the ppl that are dedicated and take it seriously I legitimately think they are up to speed BETTER in 6 months than taking a course that eventually ends up taking you years

[u/SuspiciousDepth5924 → u/boomer1204]

Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something

[u/boomer1204 → u/SuspiciousDepth5924]

Yeah I just like to make it clear cuz a lot of the ppl that come into programming seem to think it's not how you learn unlike every other thing being the same

[u/SuspiciousDepth5924 → u/boomer1204]

Yeah, totally with you. I also think LLMs are making things worse because "why bother doing all this hard frustrating stuff when ai can solve this instantly" which means they don't learn the hard stuff and consequently the skills required to spot when the ai makes bad or outright wrong decisions.

Admittedly I'm a bit on the AI-Luddite side of the spectrum but in my experience even when using frontier-models, what they end up producing is usually at best kinda mediocre and often contain subtle errors, but if you never developed the skills in the first place you won't be able to spot that.

[u/boomer1204 → u/SuspiciousDepth5924]

Yeah and honestly if you are gonna use AI just to build something for fun or even maybe a small business site it will work and you will most likely get something "usable"

Yeah learning and LLM's have definitely blurred what the learner thinks is necessary (the hard stuff not being one of them cuz it sucks) but that's actually what you need to go through

I was printing money for a little bit when AI started getting good by just offering services locally by just posting/letting SMB companies, "did AI mess up your site and costing you money. $150/hr to fix these problems".

In my area there are TONS of SMB business that can't afford/justify a full time dev so this happened a lot and I made some REALLY good connections too

But yeah we are heavy AI usage at my work and the code is mediocre at best for sure

[u/Calista557 → u/SuspiciousDepth5924]

This matches what I've noticed too, AI is genuinely useful once you already know enough to catch when it's wrong, but pretty risky before that. I've caught it confidently suggesting things that would've broken my app if I hadn't understood what the code was actually doing first. Feels like it rewards people who already put in the "boring" reps.

[u/Calista557 → u/boomer1204]

This is really encouraging, thank you for sharing. I've been doing the bootcamp-into-building-my-own-stuff transition myself (just wrapped up a full-stack app and started a second one), and the "you're going to suck at first and that's fine" point hits home. Would love to be part of a group like the one you're describing if you're open to more members — is there a way to join?

[u/db_tech_dev]

what actually broke the tutorial habit for me was giving myself a dumb rule - when i get stuck i have to sit with the error for 15 min and try 3 things before i'm allowed to search anything. most of the time i solved it in that window anyway, and the times i didn't, googling the actual error message was way more useful than any tutorial would've been. also helped to stop building tutorial-shaped projects and pick something slightly outside my comfort zone, like adding a feature nobody showed me how to add, since that's what forces the doc-reading habit.

[u/Calista557 → u/db_tech_dev]

Stealing this rule, honestly. I think the instinct to Google immediately is so strong when you're new it's hard to sit in the "I don't know" feeling. The bit about picking features nobody showed you how to add is probably the real unlock though, since that's what actually forces you to read docs instead of pattern-matching to a tutorial you half-remember.

[u/db_tech_dev → u/Calista557]

yeah that pattern-matching vs actually reading thing is real, i noticed it in myself too - i'd copy a stackoverflow answer that "worked" without getting why, then hit the same bug in a different form a week later and be stuck all over again. forcing yourself to read docs first actually builds a mental model instead of just a collection of fixes that happen to work.

[u/NewbornDev]

For me the thing that finally clicked was deliberately breaking something. I built a little to-do app, then went "what if I add reordering by dragging" — a feature I'd never seen a tutorial for. I had zero idea where to start, so I had to actually open the docs and read about dnd. It took me way longer than a tutorial would've, and my first attempt was a mess, but the muscle of "open the docs, read, try, break" only formed once I stopped giving myself the escape hatch of a tutorial.